A lot of research has gone in to a specific phenomenon known as “childhood amnesia,” which is the idea that we lack the ability to retain memories from the first 3 to 4 years of our lives. It’s not like we didn’t have memory when we were babies and toddlers, but our long-term memory was still developing during that period. One study at Emory University had children at the age of 3, with prompting from their parents, recall details about birthday parties and trips to the zoo. The researches then followed up with the children when they were between the ages of 5 and 9 to see how much they could still remember. The children aged 5 to 7 could remember a significant portion of the events, while the 8 to 9-year old children could barely remember over a third of the details they had originally recounted.

The researches concluded that as our brains develop in early childhood, our minds act like strainers, retaining only the most vivid or significant details of our early life and letting the rest fall through the cracks until our brains are developed enough to store more details.

It’s also important to note that not only are our memories highly subjective, but they can be altered our attempts to recall and convey them to other people. According to one study from Northwestern Medicine, we create new memories on top of the original memory every time we recall or tell someone about a particular memory and that new memory (of remembering the memory) can replace the original memory in our mind. Thus, every time you change your impressive fishing story about the one that got away, adding details and making the fish appear bigger and bigger each time, you can change how you originally remembered the event and convince yourself your embellishments are true.

I know this is true for myself because I have a few early memories that are completely impossible but I’m convinced are true. When I was a kid, our backyard faced another house’s backyard where an older kid lived. That kid liked to come over to play with my brother and me, which I’m sure my parents and brother can back up, but I distinctly remember this kid jumping over the 5-and-a-half-foot fence that separated our two backyards. Of course this couldn’t possibly be true, yet the image of him leaping this fence from a standing position and landing right in our backyard is fixed in my mind.

Maybe I saw him climb the fence and then exaggerated the details for myself or maybe the kid told me he could totally jump that fence if he wanted but he just didn’t feel like it and I believed him completely because I was 4 or 5. It doesn’t really matter. The point is our memories are faulty, not just in childhood, but through our entire lives.

Even if you are old enough to be able to tell the difference between a practical memory and one that’s physically impossible, you still might reshape events from your past to suit how you tell them today and how you want to understand your own past. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t trust anything you ever remember, but just to be aware that every story is subjective and be mindful of your own biases when recounting something.

I’m saying all this because I’ve become fascinated with my own past as of late and piecing together parts of my own memory that I haven’t thought about for a long time. I’ve talked a lot on here about my various struggles, like my problems with self-esteem, fear of failure, my fear of abandonment, my depression, and my anxieties. But this is a bit different. This time I want to talk about something I’ve never thought too much about: unconscious motivations.

See I’ve always favoured rational thinking and logic to understand both the world around me and inner self. I never gave any credence to gut instincts or acting on impulses without having a conscious understanding of why that act is good or bad.

Yet, I’ve found there are aspects of my personality that are still driven by unknown factors. And although I’ve spent a lot of time over the past few years working on my mental health and trying to have a better understanding of both who I am and who I want to be, certain areas of my “self” seemed beyond my reach. Or rather, they were consciously beyond my reach.

Of course I could talk about Freud or Jung or whoever else with regards to understanding how unconscious impulses form and how they interact with conscious decision making, but I don’t think I’m gonna try and nail anything concrete down. All I can say is that for myself, I wanted to know more about why I still have irrational responses to certain things.

I’ve figured out quite a bit about myself through looking through my own memories. For example, I’ve talked about how I have a history of being ignored and left behind in social situations, which has given me a big ol’ fear of both abandonment and missing out. Just being able to look back and see a cause for some of my actions has helped me acknowledge and even resist my fears to live a healthier adult life. Like I said above, though, memories are highly subjective, so I can’t claim the way I remember things is exactly how they happened. All I can do is recognize that the way I both initially perceived an event and then how I told and retold that event to myself again and again (replacing the original memory) affected who I am today.

But what about memories I haven’t told to myself multiple times? Do they still affect me even if I don’t think about them anymore and my brain doesn’t “rewrite” them? Can these memories, dormant deep in my subconscious, still play a role in who I am?

I mean, probably, right?

I wanted to try something. I wanted to see if I could look back to my early childhood and find a memory that I no longer consciously acknowledge but was still retained as “important” in my subconscious mind. As mentioned above, we tend to only retain memories from early childhood that are “vivid” or “significant” enough for the brain to bother storing them.

So I started thinking back, all the way back to my earliest days. Well, the earliest days as I could picture them. I mentally went through a list of my earliest memories to see which ones stuck out to me. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I’d know it when I found it.

Obviously there was the one about the kid leaping the fence. That’s a pleasant enough memory, if not obviously subjectively skewed. Then there’s my parents giving my brother and I matching trilby hats for church. I seem to recall being super juiced about my hat and running around the house wearing it. Cool, cool. There’s playing with toys, making up silly songs, watching TV. What was I watching? Oh yeah…

Spider-man.

Huh. That guy shows up a lot in these memories. There I am jumping on the couch pretending to shoot webs. There I am naming my toy train “Spider-man” because uh, I guess that’s a good name for a train? Oh hey, there I am playing with my Spider-man action figure and then…

Yup, I think I found something significant.

I definitely remember this toy and I definitely remember losing it. I was a super upset. That was my favourite toy and I was devastated I couldn’t find it anywhere. I remember my mom trying to help me look for it. She even called another adult to see if I had left it at their place. But no such luck. It was gone forever.

Man, I haven’t thought about that in years but I was really, really sad. I can’t seem to remember but I bet a threw a tantrum or something. And even just remembering it, I still feel sad. I was given other Spider-man toys, but I remember nothing could live up to that first one. I was really broken up about it.

OK, I started thinking this might be the kind of memory that is still affecting me in some way. So… what do I do about it. Well, this sounds a bit weird, but I decided if this memory affects my unconscious in some way, maybe I should follow it to find a solution. I thought maybe I needed to follow my gut instinct. Figured it couldn’t hurt.

Turns out my gut instinct was that I still missed that toy and I still wanted it back. Obviously that toy is long gone now, but I did have the internet on my side. After a quick search of “90s+Spiderman+toy,” I found the exact one I was looking for.

That was it all right. Look at it, in all its cheap 90s majesty.

And if I kept listening my gut, I knew li’l Clay living in my memories still wants this thing back. So… I bought it. As it just so happens, 20+ year-old action figures are pretty cheap on eBay. Shipping is not, but still!

But why did I do this? Am I just following the instincts of my toddler self? If that’s true, then in theory I would also feel an impulse to buy back all the Lego pieces I dropped down the drain when I decided it was a good idea to take a bath with my Lego sets. And, thinking back to that memory… naw, I think I’m good.

Was this some sort of Citizen Kane thing, where the secret to my character flaws and self-destructive behaviour lies in a small toy, the one last vestige of a long lost childhood, preemptively quashed by a forced push into adulthood. Again, naw, I don’t think so.

I thought about why I felt the need to buy this thing for a while and what I came up with was this:

Beyond my earliest patchy memories, I remember suddenly being very serious and very sad. I remember ashamed a lot of the time. I remember being afraid to speak my mind, say what I wanted, tell anyone I had been hurt, or even enjoy anything too much from basically the end of my toddler years and onward.

Like I said, I’ve talked about a lot of this elsewhere, but I never thought back to just how long I felt bad about myself. I still have lots of happy memories from childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood, but there were also long periods of feeling dumb, worthless, incapable, lonely, and distraught. I never thought very highly of myself and even moments of genuine pride and accomplishment never lasted longer than an hour or two before I was back to feeling ashamed of myself as a whole. For the most part, I never accepted myself as truly equal to the people around me, which caused me to resent a lot of them and feel ashamed to be near the rest.

I’ve been working very hard on changing that. Only through therapy and finding the right dose of medication have I been able to wake-up and feel good about who I am first thing in the morning. It sounds so small, but I can’t express what a major difference this is for me. The reason it took me so long to get help was because I grew up thinking having a poor opinion of yourself was normal, that not wanting to live in your own skin most of the time was standard. That was what my childhood was, save my earliest, earliest memories. I don’t think this anymore, for the most part, but that line of thinking deeply affected the core of who I am and how I see myself.

That’s why I realized I wasn’t buying this old Spider-man toy to make up for something I’d lost or to recapture a forgotten childhood. I realized I was doing it to show myself the kindness I rarely gave myself as a child. Unconsciously, my brain drew an association between my favourite toy of my toddler years and the happiness of being myself that I withheld from myself for decades. The act of purchasing it was like reaching back to my former self and saying, “You deserve this. You are valuable and you should be proud of who you are. You deserve to love you.”

I realized that loving myself, who I am now, is a very, very good thing. But I can’t love myself on the basis of “well now that you’ve worked on your mental health, you’re worthy of love.” I need to tell myself, consciously, that I was always worthy. I still look back at old photos and feel shame at the way I looked, what I wore, how I acted, and even how ashamed I felt back then. I need to undo all of that. I need to be able to see who I was, every single version of who I was, and love that Clay just as much as I love myself and the people around me in the present.

That means unlearning a lot of unconscious behaviour. That means going over a lot of memories and reminding myself I had nothing to be ashamed of in any of them. That’s going to take a while.

I’ll just have to take it one step at a time.

]]>https://oneclaymore.com/2019/02/01/a-remembrance-of-things-lost/feed/0023claytonandress-l1600spiderMiddle-Earth and Narnia are the same place I’m not crazy you’re crazyhttps://oneclaymore.com/2018/11/04/middle-earth-and-narnia-are-the-same-place-im-not-crazy-youre-crazy/
https://oneclaymore.com/2018/11/04/middle-earth-and-narnia-are-the-same-place-im-not-crazy-youre-crazy/#respondSun, 04 Nov 2018 04:40:07 +0000http://oneclaymore.com/?p=3946OK listen up! I’ve been doing a lot of VERY SERIOUS RESEARCH on this and I definitely haven’t gone off the deep end OK because I have cracked the biggest cover-up of ALL TIME!

Middle-Earth and Narnia are the SAME FRIGGIN’ PLACE!

BEAR WITH ME HERE! I know it sounds impossible but just trust me on this. I have a very rational explanation for this and it begins at a very rational place:

WIZARDS

So look. This theory shouldn’t work, in theory, because both Narnia and Middle-Earth already have their own “origin stories” that “explain the history of these mystical lands” and “don’t fit together in any conceivable way c’mon Clay don’t you have anything better to do?”

Well, I guess your mind is a bunch of wet leaves on my neighbour’s driveway because it’s about to be BLOWN!

SO: in The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien describes the creation of Middle-Earth by this deity called Eru, AKA Illúvatar creates all of… well, creation. OK, technically, this dude creates a bunch of demigods/angel-thingies known as Ainur and THEY created the land and sea and plants and critters and also elves.

One of the many things these demigod people created were the Istari, which are like a lesser-version of Ainur. The Istari are better known by their street name: Wizards.

You remember these guys. Gandalf, Christopher Lee, the one with bird crap on his face. They’re magical immortal people who appear as wise and all-knowing men. Y’know: geezers.

Anyway, so good ol’ J.R. “Radical” Tolkien had big plans for these crotchety tricksters, but he died before he could write about all of them. As a result, only three of these firecracker-spewinin’ oldsters ever got names, while the last two, known as the “Blue Wizards” because they loved the sea, wore robes the colour of the ocean, and probably smelled like salt and seagull crap.

Anyway, unlike Ganondorf, Spider-man and Podcast or whatever their names are, these two wizards leave Middle-Earth as soon as they show up and head off to the East. We never hear from them again but, according to both notes and letters ol’ talkative Tolkien wrote, they either abandoned their wizard buddies in their mythical quest to defeat the Dark Lord OR they ended up doing some other stuff that was somehow helpful in destroying the One Ring. We don’t even know what their names were, since Tolkien referred to them by different titles each time he wrote about them. It’s all very hazy, like the sea-foam filled beard of a seafaring wizard.

So we don’t know anything about these dudes for sure, right?

WRONG!

In Clive Staples Lewis’ (that’s right, his middle name was Staples. Like… the thing that holds paper together. Yeah.) The Voyage of The Dawn Treader, the crew of the ship (I can’t remember what it’s called)in that book travels across the Eastern Sea and finds some old guy by the name of Coriakin.

This weirdy beardy is living on a island with a bunch of short, whimsical creatures known as dufflepuds. They only have one foot and are invisible but that’s—look, it’s a whole thing I’m not gonna get into here. The point is: Coriakin is a wizard! And he lives in the East! On the Sea!

But wait, though: IS HE???

See, at the end of the book, (Spoilers, I guess?), it turns out this other guy they meet named Ramandu is also a magic user and he reveals that both he and Coriakin are actually stars. Well, stars who had taken on human form.

Ramandu, curiously enough, wearing blue. HMMMM!

Apparently Coriakin had to rule over the Dufflepuds to atone for some sort of past misdeeds. Ramennoodle, or whatever the other guy’s name is, says that stars take human form for a time but they can eventually return to the sky upon digesting these weird fire-berry things.

Coriakin, not wearing blue. But imagine if he was! HMMMM!

The thing is, when the human characters in the book question this guy about how a star can become a human and why they have magical powers etc., Ramalamadingdong basically does a bunch of hand-waving, saying this kind of stuff is “not for humans to know such things.”

Both of these dudes magical old dudes who may or may not be literal stars but definitely have a connection to the heavens.

If you recall earlier, the wizards of Middle-Earth were emissaries from the heavens commissioned to use their magical powers to help people and stop the forces of evil from yadda yadda yadda. And what were they originally known as again?

ISTARI!

ISTARI

Like… like a star? You get it?

OK, that’s a stretch, but the point is that both the wizard/stars of Lewis’ world and the wizard/Istari of Tolkien’s are emissaries of a creator deity who, for some weird reason, take on the form of obscenely old men. COINCIDENCE??? Yes, probab—I MEAN NO OF COURSE NOT!!

Still not convinced? Still think I’m a few cards short of a whole Candyland set?

Well I guess your mind is that one embarrassing photo of me from that one party because it’s about to be BLOWN OUT OF PROPORTION!

BEHOLD!

wait hold on I didn’t crop it right

OK, let’s try again…

BEHOLLLLLLLD!

crap now you can’t see… agh

OK, third time’s the charm and all that.

Once again I’m gonna ask you to grab on to a honey-making insect!

aka BEE-HOLD!

how did that get in there??

No hang on I can fix this…

BE

hold?

please?

those aren’t even… what?

Oh no.

Oh nononononononono.

dear lord no please make it stop

All right, y’know what? Forget the maps!

I don’t need cartography to prove to you I’m not crazy! Err, I mean, to prove that Marnle and Niddle-barth are the same or whatever.

I got an ace in the hole. The surefire proof. My secret weapon.

When all else fails, academics, intellectuals, and provincial premiers have one last trick up their sleeve:

MAKING STUFF UP AND PRETENDING IT’S POSTMODERN

err, I mean

HISTORICISM

All right. As you’ve probably already been yelling at your computer screen for the last 700 words or so, there’s one major flaw to my argument:

Middle-Earth and Narnia have completely different creation stories.

Narnia and its surrounding countries were created when a sole lion-god sang it into existence, while Middle-Earth came into being after a supreme being brought a bunch of demigods to life from his own thoughts then created a world for them to fashion however they wanted. The one thread tying these two creation stories together is the use of music.

Aslan’s song, as heard by a bunch of humans in The Magician’s Nephew is an indescribably beautiful song that shapes the earth and even causes whatever is dropped to the ground to grow upwards like that fast-forwarded footage of flowers they show in old science videos. Meanwhile, Illúvatar asks the Ainur to sing for him and they create a harmony that imbues all of creation with distinct value, purpose, and destiny.

Don’t you think it’s a little odd that both these different worlds just HAPPEN to share this very SPECIFIC similarities in their creation stories? I know what you’re thinking, though. “That’s fun and all… well, not really, it’s boring actually, but regardless: those are two differently-named gods and two very different stories.”

Well this is where all those seemingly wasted hours I spent studying critical theory are gonna finally come in handy!

Ya see, in the study of history, art, and language, we notice certain patterns amongst interacting cultures. As a particular belief, story, or vernacular is passed not only from generation to generation, but from society to society, those cultural artifacts tend to get altered. Just like the telephone game played with millions and millions of people, things like “words,” “motifs,” and oh, I don’t know, let’s say… “creation myths,” tend to change every time they’re told. Even when a particular society has written documents and a fantastical devotion to retaining the purity of the original texts, the warping of art, narrative, and even knowledge of history itself continues.

So long as your culture is populated by people who think slightly differently from each other, the emphasis, theme, moral, form, structure, and even content of any kind of narrative will change over time. History is not immune to this phenomenon, and there’s no way of escaping it. Like that birthmark shaped like a blobfish jutting off your right nipple, you can’t get rid of it; you just have to make peace with it.

Yes I know there’s such a thing as laser removal, but I have very sensitive… OK, I’ve gotten off topic.

The point is: it is, in fact, entirely conceivable, nay, probably, nay ALL TOO LIKELY that the very different historical accounts we get of both Middle-Earth and Narnia are in fact the same story, told from two distinct perspectives, relayed, reiterated, and retranslated so many times that they are barely recognizable anymore.

Perhaps the elves, in writing the Ainulindalë, slowly changed the nature of the creation myth over time to match their own cultural norms and values. Maybe Cedric Diggory and his pals only saw a small sliver of what was happening during the world’s creation. Ultimately, it’s all subjective and we can never say for sure what the REAL creation story is for this magical land of walking trees and talking rats.

And in that vein, I guess then nothing in any of the texts can ever be trusted. How do we know there were 9 members of the Fellowship? Was Eustace as much of a jerk as he’s made out to be? In fact, absolutely nothing I’ve said here can be trusted either! Even the part about how nothing I’ve said here can be trusted! Oh geez!

Well, I guess it’s all just a big, fat question mark. The important thing to remember is this:

I just wasted a whole lot of your time with wizards, bad maps, and pseudo-intellectual bullcrap, and if that isn’t a win, I don’t know what is.

]]>https://oneclaymore.com/2018/11/04/middle-earth-and-narnia-are-the-same-place-im-not-crazy-youre-crazy/feed/0narnia-vs-lotr-1024x576claytonandreswizardscoriakincoriakinlucy.gifmn1mn3mn4mn5mn6tumblr_inline_myt1y7Tq9t1r5r1ep.gifaslantumblr_n1slzyOZls1rpk9exo1_500.gifWhat my mind is likehttps://oneclaymore.com/2018/06/17/what-my-mind-is-like/
https://oneclaymore.com/2018/06/17/what-my-mind-is-like/#commentsSun, 17 Jun 2018 06:06:31 +0000http://oneclaymore.com/?p=3953A few weeks ago I realized the medication I take for my depression was no longer having its desired effect. It took a very long time to find the right combination and dosage of medication that brought my seratonin levels up to a manageable level (ie, one where I didn’t want to die because I was unable to feel joy, or relax, or not feel overwhelmed and crushed by various stresses and the littlest minutiae of life).

Since that combination of meds is no longer working, I’m in the process of trying alternatives, which takes a while since I have to let my body adjust to each new dosage/medication before I know for sure whether it’s working or not. As a result, my depression has returned and so too has my anxiety. I’m thankful that, although I am currently at the mercy of an unhealthy mind I cannot avoid nor reason against, I at least know this is temporary and with patience, I will find a new combination of meds that will hopefully help me feel better.

For the time being, I thought I would write down some of the stuff I’ve been thinking and feeling. This is what my unmedicated mind is like… although, even with meds, a lot of these thoughts and fears are still very present.

I want to cry but I don’t want to upset anyone. I worry if I let the reality of my misery out into the world, it’ll infect other people. So I pretend and keep it inside. Better I suffer alone than anyone else has to feel how I feel.

]]>https://oneclaymore.com/2018/06/17/what-my-mind-is-like/feed/47135F135-6524-463E-9F54-AE5C6BF3D039-46604-000025C3E30CDA59claytonandresThe Bible and LGBTQ+ folkhttps://oneclaymore.com/2018/05/22/the-bible-and-lgbtq-folk/
https://oneclaymore.com/2018/05/22/the-bible-and-lgbtq-folk/#respondTue, 22 May 2018 20:53:41 +0000http://oneclaymore.com/?p=3948I do seriously worry about interpreting the Bible in such a way as to ignore gospel truths in favour of making scripture more palatable for twenty-first century audiences.

I am very concerned about the danger of trying to “fit” the Bible into what we want it to say to justify whatever point—theological, social, political—we are trying to make. I think it is extremely valuable to understand the torah, the gospels, the epistles, and the rest of the scriptures “in context,” but I also see how easily we could start using such readings to throw away clearly worded language concerning fairly straight-forward teachings.

Maybe this is the reason that “understanding Paul in context” has never been entirely satisfactory for me for justifying women in roles of leadership or no longer seeing homosexuality and other non-cishetero sexual attractions as sins. I think it is utterly imperative for every Christian to read the Bible carefully, understanding it as a collection of distinct works (poetry, history, letters, historical chronicles, etc.) that have an underlying connective tissue (the story of God’s relationship to creation). But I do worry about using “selective exegesis” by looking at the “Biblical context” only for certain passages or focusing on specific historical realities at the expense of, rather than alongside, others.

I’m not saying that we don’t seriously need to understand the historical and cultural context of Paul’s words when it comes to women in leadership (like for 1 Timothy 2) or gender and sexual minorities (like for Romans 1). Please, for the love of all that is holy, understand the context! But what I am saying is those arguments shouldn’t be the whole picture when we approach more “controversial” parts of the Bible.

We shouldn’t isolate particular passages in order to defend our positions. Every verse, chapter, and book of the Bible needs to be understood in relation to the whole. None of our interpretations should be inconsistent with how the Trinity and its relation to us on earth is portrayed throughout the scriptures.

Well then, how is God and that relationship portrayed? Ask any modern theologian and they’ll probably start talking about “kingdom language” or something to that effect. Basically, God’s relationship to us is defined as “the kingdom of God” or “the kingdom of heaven,” and the structure of that kingdom ends up defining our relationship with the Most High. If you look up various theologians, you’ll get fairly similar answers along this line:

“Since God’s purpose for the world is to save a people for himself and renew the world for that people, his kingly rule implies a saving and a redeeming activity on their behalf. This is why the coming of the kingdom in the New Testament is called good news.

“In and through Jesus, God, the king, is coming in a way — a new way — into the world to establish his saving rule. First, in the hearts of his people and in their relationships by triumphing over sin, Satan, and death. Then by the exercise of his reign, gathering a people for himself in congregations that live as citizens of a new allegiance of the kingdom — not of this world. Then Christ comes a second time and completes the reign by establishing a new heavens and a new earth.”

“It’s like bringing other people into this army, you know, I’m gonna add to this, you know, that’s the discipleship picture. It’s like God wanted His kingdom expanded, like ‘Man, I want people from every nation as a part of this army, you know, me as the king, me as the ruler.’

“And so we too, you know, we’re supposed to distinguish ourselves, like you said, the world isn’t thinking that He’s the king, so we as the people of God, we’re supposed to live differently. You know, we don’t live that way, we recognize there is a king, in fact, He’s returning and we’re busy doing this and this is how we stand out…”

I mean, do I really need to define it for you? I feel like the above quotations kinda summed it up and… ugh, ok.

It means you love God and follow the commandments we’ve been given through the Law of the Torah and the Tanak as well as the teachings of Jesus, which are meant to fulfill that law (Matthew 5: 17-18). By doing this, we become citizens of a never-ending reign of God which is defined by peace (Isaiah 9:7), equity/justice (Psalm 9:7-8; Isaiah 32: 1-2) and the fact that other nations and kingdoms will declare it’s, like, way better than their nations and kingdoms (Jeremiah 3:17, Daniel 7:14). Although this kingdom was initially believed to be intended for the Jewish people, the disciples of Jesus began preaching that it’s actually open for everyone (Acts 10:34; Galatians 3: 6-14).

Everything we read in the Bible should relate in some way to this understanding of God wanting us to live in the kingdom, following the teachings of the law, which is also the teachings of Jesus. Cool? Cool.

So what is this law / what are those teachings?

OK, are you seriously asking, because like, this is pretty straightforward stuff… it’s like, sunday school, plus like every pastor and theologian out there has written a response to this question and I feel like you don’t need a layman like me to run you through this again and to be honest it’s like

“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ (Deuteronomy 6:4-5) This is the first and greatest commandment.And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ (Leviticus 19:17-18) All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Some guy said that. I don’t want to look it up.

The point is the kingdom is actually kinda cyclical. It’s a place of peace and equity that is open for everyone who practices peace and equity towards everyone else. I mean, it doesn’t mean that if you’re a generally loving, peaceful, equitable person, you’re basically in. At the centre of all descriptions of the kingdom and the law about the kingdom is God. Even the above summary still emphasizes that you gotta love God, like, as much as you possibly can with your entire heart, soul, mind.. basically your whole being. But who is this God?

Please don’t make me answer this, you should know this, everyone knows the answer to this. Like, it’s not even sunday school because you don’t even have to go to church to give a pretty educated guess on this one so really

GOD IS LOVE.

Once again: it’s entirely cyclical. This kingdom is a place of love that is open to everyone who loves everyone else and also loves the person who invented love and who also IS love who also loves them and also loves everyone else. If you love everyone and love the person who IS love you get to be part of the love kingdom. It’s pretty basic stuff, really.

SO

What does THAT mean for when we’re reading verses in the Bible that we believe call us cast people out from roles in the church?

Romans 1 is the classic example, with Paul’s list of sexual sins, including women and men “giving themselves” over to “shameful lusts” used as justification for the church refusing to acknowledge marriage of non-heterosexual couples and removing LGBTQ folks from positions within the church body.

By itself, Romans 1 comes off pretty straightforward as a condemnation of sexual activities outside the boundaries of marriage between a man and a woman.

“Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones.In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

“Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips,slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents;they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.”

But does that reading make sense in relation to the rest of the Bible. Well… uh, no. Definitely not. In fact, it doesn’t even make sense in relation to the rest of Romans.

Later on, Paul calls on the people in the church of Rome to “welcome one another as Christ welcomed you, for the glory of God” (Romans 15:7), right before going on a long rant about the important of reaching out and accepting the gentiles. You know, the people whom the early church had refused to accept for many, many years because they weren’t Jewish.

And unless you have a lineage dating back directly to Israel in the first century, you need to recognize that without this call to action in accepting gentiles, you would not be reading any of these verses or this blog about it. Christianity would have stayed a smaller sect of Judaism.

But that’s not the case. As Francis Chan said in that quotation above, “It’s like God wanted His kingdom expanded, like ‘Man, I want people from every nation as a part of this army.” I myself am a Christian because the early Christians understood and acted on a call to extend the invitation to God’s kingdom to everyone else. I can claim Jesus as my king because the early church was reevaluated as not just a new thing for the Jewish people, but a kingdom for everybody, including whatever ancestors of mine converted way back in… I honestly have no idea, CE.

I can’t start putting limitations on who *I* think should and should be allowed in this kingdom of love because the only reason I’m in it in the first place was because those limits were abolished. I need to welcome others into this kingdom as openly as my ancestors were invited, otherwise I’m not following the law/teachings of this love kingdom and I may as well leave.

“Well that’s all well and good, but what if the people we invite refuse to give up their sinful ways? What if they continue living in sin? They can’t be part of God’s kingdom then, right?”

You’re talking about not letting LGBTQ people attend church/be church members/take on leadership roles in the church because they pursue activities we deem sinful, yes? This is the position a lot of people of faith get stuck on and a position I held for years and years. This is the “love the sinner, hate the sin,” doctrine, where we try to demonstrate how loving and welcoming we are as a church but still put limitations on who can enter in. “Love the sinner, hate the sin” sounds good in theory, but hating the sin should not place any limitations on the love you extend towards any other person, no matter what their sin (and yours) may be. If your “hate” towards one person’s sin means you refuse to invite them in to your home or your church, it means you are placing limitations on how much love you you show to them. You are still hating the sinner because you are still casting them out.

Inviting people into the church is not separate from inviting people into the kingdom. As John Piper said above, God’s kingdom is made manifest in two ways, the first being “in the hearts of his people and in their relationships by triumphing over sin, Satan, and death.” When we join in loving relationship with other people here on earth, particularly as God’s people, that’s acting out the reign of the kingdom. Likewise, when we restrict loving relationships with other people, we are ignoring the law/teachings of the kingdom. There are no limits to God’s love for us God and God alone determines citizenship in the kingdom. If we are to “welcome one another as Christ welcomed [us],” then we need to remember there was no limitation placed on our own acceptance.

When I committed my life to Christ and when I became an official member of my church, I was asked to make a commitment towards restraining from sin and following the teachings of Christ. I don’t know what it was like for others, but I had to say “I will” or “I do” to a few different proclamations including “Do you renounce sin and the devil?” and “Do you commit your life to follow Jesus?” and things of that nature.

Yes, we are called to renounce our sinful ways. Did I stop sinning? I don’t think I could find a font big and bold enough to express the way I want to yell “OF COURSE NOT.”

We all know sin isn’t something that just goes away, no matter how much you try, because the point is we are fallible and only Jesus can wash away our sins and yadda yadda yadda it’s all basic Christian 101 stuff I’m not using the tiny font again but you get the idea.

Both you and I do not become perfect just because we enter into the kingdom. And our failure to do that does not preclude us from being both accepted in and re-accepted in again and again no matter what choices we make.

BUT I know you’re gonna say, what if you actively choose to do something others declare is a sin but you personally continue to do with wild abandon? What if you continue pursuing “sexually shameful” acts and refuse to apologize for them or ask Jesus for forgiveness???

Well, that is if we believe that pursuing relationships with humans who are the same sex, or identify outside of the gender binary, is sinful.

Oftentimes, even in the book of Romans, same-sex relationships appear to be described as “unnatural.” Or, at least, that’s the English word we use for it. This translation has been used by modern Christians to condemn not only homosexual relations, but all of the sexual orientations and gender identities that fall under the LGBTQ+ banner.

But is this right? Is “queerness,” or rather, falling outside of the cishetero “norm,” inherently unnatural?

Well, uh, no. We know for a fact that sexuality and gender are much more complex than the original writers of the scriptures understood. More than a few studies have shown us that homosexual attraction is related to a myriad of factors, including genetics and early development. That is to say: being gay, lesbian, or bisexual is not a choice anymore than being straight is. The L, G, and B of LGBTQ+ are just as natural as any other genetic and behavioural variations you see in population groups on earth.

Then what about the T and the other letters?

Science tells us that biologically, gender gets more complicated than simply being born with this or that genitalia. Humans can be born with an array of chromosome arrangements outside of an XX/XY binary.

As well, humans can be born with what is referred to as “ambiguous genitalia,” but it’s easier to think of genitalia on a spectrum. See, while in utero, the average fetus starts to form genitalia that, if left alone, develops into a clitoris and a meatus (also known as a urethra opening or “pee-pee hole”), but if testosterone is present, those genitalia will form into a penis, scrotum, and testes. If the human is born with genitalia that doesn’t directly fall between what is traditionally defined as “male” or “female,” that person would be known as intersex. Although these type of formations have long been classified as “abnormalities,” in truth, intersex people make up just under 1.7% of the population on earth today. For comparison, red-haired people make up somewhere between 1-2% of the population.

We also know that transexuality, which is to say, identifying differently than the gender you were assigned at birth (more than likely based on the appearance of your genitals). Many Christians have traditionally balked at this kind of thinking because if you were born with certain genitalia, you must automatically be one gender or another. To say otherwise would be to deny the way God created you, right?

Well, no actually. Through a better understanding of both the body and societal influence (nature and nurture), we’ve been able to learn that gender is far more complex than what the shape of one part of your body. Studies have shown that trans women have brain structures that are more similar—in certain ways—to cis women than cis men.

Although a person may have been born with certain parts of their body matching what we typically associate with one gender, their brain patterns might align more with another. There is still a lot that we don’t know about prenatal and postnatal development, but the evidence we do have clearly indicates trans identity, in whatever form it takes, is not simply a choice.

There is still a lot about the development of sexuality, gender, and orientation we don’t understand, however we know now that calling any LGBTQ+ person “unnatural” is completely inaccurate, not to mention incredibly dehumanizing.

Was Paul wrong then? At least based on what he would have understood then versus what we know now… yes. But that’s still operating off the assumption he was condemning homosexuality (and all other non cishetero identities and orientations). And the truth is, if we read Romans 1 both in its original as well as in relation to the Bible as a whole, we see that the Pauline approach to non-heteronormative relationships is not so black and white.

For one thing, in Romans 1: 18-32, Paul is not simply listing off sins to be condemned. At the beginning of this section, he starts talking about idolatry, which is to say, loving and praising something more than God. In the time Romans was written, idolatry was, quite often, more literal (ie, people would praise literal idols), but the emphasis of this section is meant to be applied to all Christians as a warning against any one item or person or practice taking precedence over love of the Creator. Adam Nicholas Phillips, taking inspiration from Steve Chalke and James Brownson, argues Paul was specifically addressing “misguided over-sexualized spirituality” present in the Roman church at the time.

By “worship[ing] and serv[ing] created things rather than the Creator,” the men and women Paul is referring to not only “exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones,” but also “bec[a]me filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents…”

These “unnatural” relations are not only portrayed as an effect, rather than a cause of sinful behaviour, but James Brownson believes Paul was using language that, to his audience, would be immediately recognizable not as condemning non-heterosexual romance, but condemning the type of Caligulan and Gaian orgies which were all the rage at that time. Emperor Gaius claimed he was a god and orchestrated sex-based rituals with unconsenting parties. Brownson claims “Gaius Caligula graphically illustrates the reality of which Paul speaks in Romans 1: the movement from idolatry to insatiable lust to every form of depravity, and the violent murderous reprisal that such behavior engenders.”

These practices eventually played a role in Gaius’ untimely demise: “a military officer whom [Gaius] had sexually humiliated joined a conspiracy to murder him, which they did less than four years into his reign. Suetonius records that Gaius was stabbed through the genitals when he was murdered.” This explains Paul’s somewhat odd choice of stating the men who “committed shameful acts with other men” ended up receiving “the due penalty for their error.”

In addition to understanding the historical context, we need to look closely at the grammar Paul uses throughout the end of Romans 1. For one thing, Paul typically, although not always, tends to use “you” and “we” phrases, focusing on the church members he is addressing and reminding them of the necessity of unity within the community of believers.

Yet Paul uses “they,” “them,” and “their” more often in Romans 1: 24-32 than in the rest of the letter. He starts by talking about how the “wrath of God” is being levelled against people who are steeped in “godlessness and wickedness,” going on to list a series of actions that “they,” these godless people, do. The whole list is bookended with mentioning that these people know better than to go against the will of God: “God has made it plain to them” in verse 19, “For although they knew God” in verse 21, and ending with “Although they know God’s righteous decree” in verse 32.

The “they” Paul is referring to (whether its Gaius like Brownson says or someone else) is not just in deep trouble because they’ve done some bad stuff, but because they should have known better. “They” were given the gospel and the right directions, but “they” still ignored what was laid out in front of them.

This may seem well and good, but this whole section is actually incomplete on its own. Want to know how I know this?

Seriously. Ask me how I know this. This time I really want you to ask cause I’m gonna do a thing here and I’m really excited for

ROMANS 2.

You know, the verse that comes right after the end of Romans 1, which is made up of verses people use to cast judgment on those who participate in “sexually shameful” acts?

“You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things.Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth.So when you, a mere human being, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment?Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?”

In a classic “Nathan-talking-to-David-about-the-whole-Bathsheba-thing” twist, Paul turns the tables on his audience. He has lulled them into a false sense of security by listing off all the sins of this “they” group before hitting them hard with a truth-bomb: you too, church of Rome, should know better than to cast judgment on others when that same truth that was laid out for them was laid out for you!

This whole section was never about just listing sins you’re supposed to stay away from. It’s actually about calling out people for focusing too much on the perceived slights of others when you are making the exact same mistakes they are: ignoring the truth of the gospel that is right in front of you.

And that truth is what I’ve been talking about this whole time, what the whole of Romans and the New Testament has been talking about: God’s unconditional love and acceptance in His kingdom.

We do not get to judge who does and doesn’t enter into the kingdom of God. We’ve been forgiven and accepted despite our numerous and oftentimes predictably consistent failings. Even if you think that someone’s choice when it comes to whom they have sex with, whom they marry, or how they interpret the overall “sinfulness” of those actions, you don’t get to judge or decide whether they are “in” or “out” of the kingdom of love, which is made of loving people loving everyone else because they too were loved and invited in to the kingdom of love… which is made of loving people loving everyone else because they too were loved and invited in to the kingdom of love… which is made of you get the point.

Rejecting someone else’s acceptance into that kingdom is the exact opposite of what the kingdom is all about. Everyone is welcomed in because God is love. To deny people acceptance into that kingdom, which is made of “people from every nation as a part of this army” here on earth as it exists within the church, the “hearts of his people and in their relationships” is to deny the very structure of the kingdom. Rejecting people from our relationships and the church body is to reject God’s love for everyone. We are called to continually invite people in as Christ invites us.

And those “sins” we seem to be obsessed with? Well, neither Paul nor the rest of the Bible casts any real condemnation on homosexuality outside of when it’s practiced in relation to thoughts and actions that put idols in front of God. The Bible has no condemnation for healthy, non-heterosexual relationships that are carried out in the light of the knowledge of the kingdom. So long as those relationships are consistent with loving God with all your being and loving your neighbours (ALL OF THEM) as yourself, they cannot be sinful because they do not detract from these two commandments on which the law and the prophets hang.

The kingdom does not look like what a lot of churches currently look like. We keep letting bad interpretations of the law get in the way of the truth of the law, which is Jesus (who is God, who is love, which makes up the kingdom, and on the cycle goes). So many Christians, including myself, have worked tirelessly to create a community of believers that rejects those whom God loves, leaving the makeup of the body of Christ looking bereft of key parts.

“To choose a spiritual community that denies the incredible gifts [of] women and LGBTQ folks is to choose to live in a spiritual poverty of our own making. Provision happens when we recognize the gifts in our neighbor and offer them our own.”

Marcus Halley

We need to go back to scripture and read it as a whole. We need to recognize what God’s kingdom should truly look like and become a reflection of that in our lives and in the life of the body.

]]>https://oneclaymore.com/2018/05/22/the-bible-and-lgbtq-folk/feed/0bibleclaytonandresthe-queen-james-pro-gay-friendly-bibleScreen Shot 2018-06-21 at 6.22.49 PM09-23-2016_Figure2v2On losing friendshttps://oneclaymore.com/2018/02/26/on-losing-friends/
https://oneclaymore.com/2018/02/26/on-losing-friends/#commentsMon, 26 Feb 2018 04:06:48 +0000http://oneclaymore.wordpress.com/?p=3937I’ve lost a fair amount of friends. That’s part of both growing up and also life. People come in and out of your life, some disappear quickly while others fade slowly like fog on a windshield.

It’s not the loss so much as the adjustment to your new world—one where that particular person is no longer present—that can be the hardest. Although our online lives make the transition from one world to the next seem less immediate, seeing someone you long forgot about appear on your newsfeed every once in a while does help hammer home the fact that there person so seldom enters your current orbit that they may as well be on another planet.

I’m talking about this because it wasn’t too long ago I haemorrhaged a rather large number of friends and it’s taken longer than I expected to really adjust to my world without them. Not that I’m not still connected to these people, or that I don’t still interact with them online or at public functions.

In fact, I actually ran into one particular person recently. That interaction kind of encapsulated the mix of feelings I had about that person, that group of acquaintances, and the world I once belonged to.

See, I lost contact with this “group” shortly after my engagement broke apart. And it was never really a group, I’m just using that as a catch-all term for a selection of people who stop interacting with me after this point.

I mean… it was sort of expected, I suppose. A lot of the people I’m thinking of were friends with both me and my fiancé at the time, so when things fell apart, I can only assume some people chose to stay friends with her and forget about me or just forget about both of us. I have no idea, really, since so few people ever reached out to me when word got out what had happened between us.

And that hurt. I don’t know why, but so few people I had been building relationships with over the course of several years tried to talk to me when I was going through a fairly rough time.

Like this one friend I ran into recently. We were never especially close, but we had spent a lot of time together at school and had been in a lot of the same circles. So when I never heard from them when my engagement ended, it still hurt. I didn’t realize how much it hurt at the time, though. It was only after running into this person for the first time in years that I realized I was quite upset at them.

I had found out just prior to this that this person had reached out to another mutual friend after their relationship fell apart under similar, but not identical, circumstances. My friend had comforted this other person through their difficulty, but had not so much as messaged me once in years.

So when I met them recently and they said hi to me, asked me how I was doing, and acted all chummy, like we were still buddies from back in the day… that’s when I realized how much they had hurt me.

Again, we weren’t bosom pals or anything. Just school friends more than anything. But I think it was the attitude that hurt the most. The fact that they put on a demeanour of avuncular playfulness while I was still coming to grips with how little they had ever cared for me in the first place. They were never interested in what had happened to me, or how I had handled my life and the various struggles that came next. They just wanted… to tell you the truth I have no idea what they wanted. They were all nice to me that day, then I went back to never hearing from them in any way. I guess it was to be polite?

Look. It doesn’t matter. I don’t want to keep griping about this one person. They have their own stuff to deal with and I seriously don’t want to judge them for whatever it is that they’re doing with their own life.

But I do want to articulate that this one interaction possesses a theme that’s become very common for me. I’ve been cut out of quite a few different circles. I’m used to it. It doesn’t get any easier, but I know the process and I know how to take care of myself and take it less (although not completely) personally.

I too have cut people out of my life. In quite a few circumstances, it was accidental (or seemed that way). Things change and you just don’t connect with the same people as you once did.

I have also intentionally cut people out, as well. People in my life who were toxic to the wellbeing of me and those I cared about. It sucks and so often, you don’t realize how bad that person is for you until you get some separation.

I had a friend through elementary and high school. Neither of us were terrible athletic or cool or popular, so we became friends out of necessity. But they were my best friend. We did everything together, and we saw each other through some tough times. It was only as things changed and I started to make new friends in high school that I began—slowly, very slowly—to see how damaging this person was to me.

Everything was about them, and I was, to them, their “sidekick.” I was an accessory, to be used when needed and discarded until wanted again. And it was only after I started to split from this person that I saw just how harmful they were to a number of others as well.

And to be honest… that’s how I started to feel about this other friend I ran into recently. I realized how badly I wanted them to reach out, to say something to me. I had worked so hard to make them like me, to prove to them how important I was and worthy of being their friend. Around them, I had to be someone I never felt comfortable being.

And that’s not just true of that one person. Looking back, so, so many of those friends I lost were friends I had worked hard to impress or to make them like me. I had to be things I never should have been around them. Maybe they weren’t as openly toxic as my elementary school friend was, but I still ended up being hurt around them because I never got the same level of effort in return.

To be honest, again, I’ve never felt more myself than in the past year. There are so many areas of interest I’ve had that I never comfortable exploring while I was in the orbits of specific people. Now, things are far from perfect, but I like what I do. I’m proud of what I have to say. I love not pretending to be someone I never felt comfortable being.

I know how that sounds, and in fact, how this whole post might look. It appears like I’m just using this at a platform to complain about specific people then switch to how many friends I have now and how I’m not mad, I’m laughing in fact.

To be honest, I still feel hurt by the fact that there’s a good two to three dozen people I expected to reach out to me about four years ago. I still have no idea why they didn’t. And, while I have talked a lot about my own personal journeyonhere, I still struggle with the sense there are things I need to work through. Writing this here is helpful, but it’s by no means a “fix” to my own problems with self-doubt.

When I saw this one friend recently, I felt like I needed to say something to them. I felt I needed to tell them how hurt I had been they never reached out to me while I was in pain. But I didn’t. I realized I didn’t owe them any more of life than I had already dumped on them up to that point. They weren’t part of my world anymore, and that’s ok.

I had adjusted to my new world and, like I said before, I love what I’ve found here.

]]>https://oneclaymore.com/2018/02/26/on-losing-friends/feed/2Friendship-DayclaytonandresLooking for a co-pilothttps://oneclaymore.com/2018/01/05/looking-for-a-co-pilot/
https://oneclaymore.com/2018/01/05/looking-for-a-co-pilot/#commentsFri, 05 Jan 2018 04:28:40 +0000http://oneclaymore.wordpress.com/?p=3934Have you ever listened to a couple tell “their story”? How they met, how they started dating, what made them first realize the other person was “the one”? Every story is unique, and I don’t just mean in a positive way.

Sometimes you’re listening to one of those stories and all you can think is “Oh geez, these people have no idea what they’re doing.” Maybe, as you listen, you get the distinct impression they clearly rushed into things or their story raises enough red flags to make up a communist parade. Or maybe you really get the sense these people don’t really… get it, you know? Like, they don’t grasp what they’re getting into, they don’t understand what a serious relationship requires of them. They really don’t “get” that a real relationship means sacrifice and pain and loss alongside all the companionship and joy and love.

But every relationship is different and there’s no one right way to do things. Maybe one pair of partners doesn’t approach their relationship with the same seriousness as another, at least not at first, but that doesn’t mean theirs won’t work out. What makes each relationship unique is the fact that the couple get to define what that relationship is and what they mean to each other.

The strife comes, of course, in the figuring out what the other person wants and expects while also reconciling that with what you want and expect… provided you actually know what that is in the first place… and provided they know that as well… and provided both of you know the difference between what you’re looking for in a relationship vs what you’re looking for in a person…

Look, it’s a whole mess.

It’s so much harder trying to manage your present and future life with someone if you or they or both of you have no idea what it is you/they/both of y’all want and need. The reason so many relationships between young and/or experienced people don’t work out is because so often they don’t fully understand themselves and what they’re looking for.

Personally, I’ve always been hesitant to try and define what it is I look for in a relationship. I never wanted to get in a place where I started imagining an ideal person or an ideal relationship that would then taint my reality. I didn’t want to miss someone who was special in a way I never could have imagined because I was too fixated on the “ideal” someone of my own imaginings.

However, I think I’ve been confusing imagining an ideal person with an ideal relationship. I have no idea if I will ever meet someone I want to spend the rest of my life with and I certainly have no earthly clue what kind of person that would be.

But I do know what kind of relationship I would want with that person.

Going back to listening to other couple’s stories, it’s interesting to see how the partners like to define the other person.

Sometimes couples see each other as soul mates, special people with a deep, spiritual connection to one another that are able to understand and provide for each other in ways no other people could.

Sometimes they see each other as best friends, their bestest buddies whom they love to talk, hang out, and do random stuff with and who also just happen to be their romantic partners.

And sometimes they see each other as just that: romantic partners. They see each other as BFs, GFs, SOs, etc. who occupy their romantic side of their life but don’t necessarily cross over with any other parts of their lives.

But something I don’t see too often is when partners see each other as… well, partners. I’m not just “romantic” partners, but like co-workers or police partners in buddy cop movies. I love it when I see couples who aren’t just in a loving relationship, but a working relationship.

Now, I don’t mean that it’s all business all the time with these people. Nor do I mean their relationship is strictly professional and there’s no room for intimacy, amity, or vulnerability. But I love it when a loving couple is defined by something more than just their bond with one another.

I love to see couples that have built a strong relationship together and have decided, together, to do something more… together. They want to accomplish something, they have their sights set on changing things, working on things, establishing things. And again, I don’t just mean stuff for themselves, like making a family or buying a home. I mean they know that is something out there other than themselves, they want to work for or towards that thing, and they will have each other’s backs every step of the way.

For some couples, it might mean investing in their community: reaching out to those in need, whether local or global.

It might mean creating something: a work of art that affects people in a profound way.

It might mean changing the world around them: dedicating all their efforts to make a real difference in how things are done in their city or country.

And it might even mean looking, every day, to make the lives of other people better, even if it’s just in little ways: doing small gestures and praying for people everyone else has forgotten.

These are the kinds of relationships I most love to see.

That doesn’t mean these types of relationships are better than any others, or that I think any less of you and your special someone if you don’t think you fit this criteria.

I love these types of relationships because it’s the kind of couple I want to be in.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to meet someone special, fall in love, and spend the rest of my life with them. But I never wanted to find someone who was just my romantic partner or my soul mate. And even when I thought I had found that special someone and they talked about they were happy we could be both best friends and significant others… it wasn’t what I truly wanted.

I would love to find someone I do love romantically, someone I do feel is special to me (if not my “soul mate” since I have a problem with the connotations of that title) and even someone I love to hang out with like they’re my good buddy, my best friend.

But none of that would be enough. I want to find someone who wants to accomplish something with me. I want to find someone who, like me, isn’t satisfied with just having a family or buying a home, but wants to change the world for the better, even if it’s just in little ways.

I want to find someone who I feel has my back, someone I can call my partner. Someone who is navigating towards the same place I am whom I can work with as my equal.

I want a co-pilot I guess is what I’m saying. And I want to be someone else’s co-pilot. I want to be their equal and help them navigate to where they want to be. I want to be their partner and have their back, no matter what comes their way.

I want to to help them in their quest to change the world for the better, to support them in wanting more out of life and accomplishing something, whatever it is, that makes a real difference, even if it’s just in little ways.

Again, most couples aren’t necessarily like this for one another (although there are still quite a lot of them out there). But in truth, I’ve realized this type of relationship, one that’s made up of two equals working together towards the same goal, a real partnership, is what I truly am looking for. And I honestly don’t know if I’ll ever find it (it is a lot to ask for on top of also a romantic relationship that feels like a friendship with a… “soul mate” or some other better term for that).

If I don’t… well, that’s ok. If I never find a person I can have this type of partnership with, I’d be all right with that. I’d rather stay single than try to build something with someone who doesn’t hold the same values as me.

So maybe I’ll find a co-pilot someday. Maybe I’ll keep flying solo. What matters most to be is where I’m headed, where I’ve always wanted to keep aiming for:

A world that is better than this one, even if it’s just in little ways.

]]>https://oneclaymore.com/2018/01/05/looking-for-a-co-pilot/feed/3pilotsclaytonandresOn being a sexual assault survivor in Trump’s worldhttps://oneclaymore.com/2017/11/10/on-being-a-sexual-assault-survivor-in-trumps-world/
https://oneclaymore.com/2017/11/10/on-being-a-sexual-assault-survivor-in-trumps-world/#respondFri, 10 Nov 2017 01:27:41 +0000http://oneclaymore.wordpress.com/?p=3821It’s now officially one year since Donald Trump was elected to office as the President of the United States. And while his presidency has been marred by more than a few setbacks (including an ongoing FBI investigation, failure to pass a number of bills promised in his campaign, and approval ratings lower than any modern president to date), the whole Trump train keeps on chugging along.

For many Americans, as well as the rest of the world, witnessing not only his election but the continued support of his actions and policies from his base has been difficult. But for the survivors of sexual assault, abuse, and rape, it is nearly unbearable.

Not only does has Trump been accused of sexual assault and sexual harassment by fifteen different women — including an accusation of assault and rape by his former wife, Ivana (which was settled out of court, followed by a gag order against her) — he has also been accused of walking in on contestants of the Miss USA and Miss Teen USA pageants while they were undressing multiple times from 1997 to 2006. And there was the infamous Billy Bush tape where Trump was recorded making vulgar comments about women he knew and bragging about being able to sexually assault them with no repercussions due to his celebrity status:

“You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything…

“Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”

Even with the most lenient view in favour of Mr. Trump, believing all 15 women and all the contestants of the various pageants are not telling the truth, you still have to contend with the fact that the US President is a man who believes sexual assault is acceptable behaviour and is worth bragging about to colleagues.

But of course we must believe women, because we know the process of coming forward against someone who has harassed, assaulted, or attacked you is incredibly difficult, particularly when were or continue to be in a position of power over you, particularly when they are a well-known public figure, and particularly if that figure has legions of fans willing to come to their defence by attacking and ridiculing the accusers. And that’s not even getting the shame and guilt many victims reinforce on themselves, feeling that being assaulted or harassed is somehow their fault instead of their assailant’s.

We know this because it has happened so many times before, most recently with the stories published about comedian Louis CK. A number of women who accused CK were not only pressured by him and his publicist to back down, threatening repercussions to their careers, but were also mocked by members of the public on social media and online publications.

There is no advantage for women to allege assault or harassment that never happened. Even if you aren’t bullied and demeaned by random strangers online, you are still expected to provide proof of an event that you were not prepared for, when you were being preyed on at your most vulnerable, when your mind was not focused on “Quick, get some tangible evidence” so much as “How do I get out of this situation/How do I get them to stop.”

Even if we put all that extraneous pressure aside, survivors of sexual assault and abuse in the age of Trump are still dealing with burdens few people are ever equipped to carry. It’s one thing to be harassed, assaulted, or raped by someone and never see them face justice. But seeing a person who openly boast about assaulting women be subsequently rewarded with the highest position of power in the country is a kind of pain and fear few people have ever had to face. That is, until last November.

Although I don’t want to share anything here that isn’t my story to tell, I can say I have seen innumerable women share not only their own survival stories, but also share how seeing Trump become the leader of the free world has taken a serious toll on their mental health and overall wellbeing.

A lot of individuals love to use the word “trigger” as a way to mock others for being too “sensitive” or “PC.” But the concept of triggering relates directly to PTSD and having a traumatic experience—the kind that gives you nightmares for the rest of your life, the kind you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy—resurface, often in a visceral, inescapable way. Something that triggers a horrifying experience often forces you to relive some or every aspect of the event, which can incapacitate even the most hardened marines.

Imagine if every time you turned on the news, went on social media, or even just started talking to a coworker about your weekend, you were reminded of not just your worst, most painful memory (or memories), but were taken back to an experience where you had no control, no agency. Where you felt nothing but dirt and guilt and shame. Where you were told you were nothing, you were worth nothing, and that you deserved the horrors you were being given. And every feeling, every sensation of that part of your life came flooding back, taking control of your body. But it’s still 9:00 on a Monday, so you have to pretend you’re feeling none of that and everything is just fine, even though every ounce of your being is screaming that it isn’t.

That is many people’s lives right now.

The #MeToo campaign only gave the public a tiny glimpse of just how prevalent sexual assault is against women in our culture. And those were only the stories that people felt safe enough to share, let alone the ones that could get them fired, or invite other unwanted repercussions. #MeToo still hasn’t gone far enough in exposing the sheer emotional, physical, and mental damage that has been done to far, far too many women on every inch of the globe.

For many of these women, teens, and even girls, Trump is an ever-present reminder of what they’ve been through or are still going through. Some woman on Twitter have been shared how even the way Trump speaks and conducts himself is incredibly reminiscent of their abusers. The confidence he exudes as both an unapologetic narcissist and as a regular harasser of his rivals and those he deems a threat to his image contribute to an overall image that is just too much to take for many survivors. It would be difficult to see him on TV or on the street just once, let alone witness wall-to-wall coverage of his antics, his every word, and the vehement defences of his actions by his most ardent supporters.

Although it may come as some consolation to see celebrities like Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, and Louis CK face real consequences for their years of disgusting and disparaging behaviour, Trump continues to preen his feathers on his ill-gotten throne in Washington, D.C. He has yet to display anything resembling remorse for his actions (even the ones he has admitted to) and continues to surround himself with enough sycophants and invertebrates to guarantee he never has to face more than five minutes of criticism without a follow-up back rub of affirmation.

The coke-summoning, double-scoop shovelling lifestyle he has built for himself within the White House bears a striking resemblance to the kind of self-care so many victims and survivors have a hard time giving themselves. Having faced the kind of trauma most people cannot (or will not) imagine, supplemented with self-shaming in addition to the fear, guilt, and ridicule Twitter and news networks love to reinforce with a vengeance, many survivors still struggle to go easy on themselves, to know they are human beings of value and life, worthy of so much more than the ugliness they have faced.

Yet, Trump, or rather his legion of apologists and proponents, maintains a pudgy-handed grasp not only on the executive branch of America, but the not oft-interrupted attention of the world and the sadly fragile and all-too-frequently mistreated conscious and subconscious minds of each and every survivor.

]]>https://oneclaymore.com/2017/11/10/on-being-a-sexual-assault-survivor-in-trumps-world/feed/0lk100916_colorclaytonandresWhat Satanism and Christianity Have in Commonhttps://oneclaymore.com/2017/10/26/what-satanism-and-christianity-have-in-common/
https://oneclaymore.com/2017/10/26/what-satanism-and-christianity-have-in-common/#respondThu, 26 Oct 2017 16:48:03 +0000http://oneclaymore.wordpress.com/?p=3516“The soul is a thing so impalpable , often so useless, occasionally annoying, that its loss cost me just a little less emotional disturbance than if I had, on a walk, lost my calling cards.”

-Charles Baudelaire, Le Spleen de Paris, XXIX

On April 30, 1966, Anton LaVey founded the Church of Satan, the first organized religious organization dedicated to satanic belief.

LaVey’s definition of Satanism, however, differs greatly from both the public perception of “Satanists” and the wide variety of secular pagan practices lumped together under the banner of “heresy” by churches throughout the medieval period to the present day. The Church of Satan does not, in fact, believe in either the devil or Hell, instead claiming Lucifer is simply an archetype of perfected living worthy of emulation. Satan, they assert, embodies rebellion against Judeo-Christian and Islamic faiths and embracing of individualism and logical reasoning.

“Let me conclude this brief overview by adding that Satanism has far more in common with Objectivism than with any other religion or philosophy. Objectivists endorse reason, selfishness, greed and atheism. Objectivism sees Christianity, Islam and Judaism as anti-human and evil… At the same time, Satanism is a “brutal” as well as a selfish philosophy. We do not hold, as do the Objectivists that the universe is “benevolent.””

LaVey’s version of Satanism, then, is distinctly removed from the straw-man version of “satanic” rituals and beliefs used by Western Christians for decades to rally against things like rock-and-roll and Dungeons and Dragons.

That’s not to say that the more traditional, demon-worship version doesn’t exist. But LaVey was the first to codify a religion under the moniker of “Satanism,” even if his version disputed the existence of both Heaven and Hell.

But why Rand’s Objectivism? In wanting to systematize a version of “satanic” belief based around rejecting Abrahamic beliefs, LaVey found a kindred spirit in the novels of Rand, herself a fervent materialist, atheist, and harsh critic of Christianity. Rand praised the virtue of individualism, which is to say putting oneself and one’s interests above those of others, a belief echoed repeatedly by members of the Church of Satan.

Yet, for as long as Rand’s writings have been around, Christians from the Western world have tried to reconcile her Objectivist beliefs with various forms of evangelical theology. In an interview with Forbes, the producer of the film trilogy adaptation of Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, himself a trustee of the Randian advocacy group, the Atlas Society, stated:

“There must be room in Objectivism for charity and benevolence.”

Dr. David Cotter of Colorado Christian University has written many defences of what he believes to be Rand’s Biblical bent. In “Check Your Premises: Ayn Rand Through a Biblical Lens,” Cotter acknowledges “[Rand’s’ understanding of the nature of human beings and God deviates significantly from the Bible,” however he insists that “Rand’s conception of the ideal man has striking features in common with Jesus Christ.”

Now, in one sense, this individual is a far cry from the character of Christ as depicted in the Gospels, caring only for himself and relying solely on his own faculties rather than praying to and teaching of a higher power.

But at the same time, Rand’s definition, particularly when isolated from the bulk of her writing and controversial statements over the years, is malleable enough to fit into any preconceived theology or ideology. The Church of Satan can emphasize the parts about the ideal man having great self-esteem and no faith in a higher power in order to promote their focus on hedonism and self-congratulation. Meanwhile, Christians and Randians wishing to bridge the gap between the Christian faith and Objectivist practices can focus on how Jesus was in fact rationally-focused and independently-driven. They can even select key quotes from Rand, like this from one of her letters:

Jesus was one of the first great teachers to proclaim the basic principle of individualism — the inviolate sanctity of man’s soul, and the salvation of one’s soul as one’s first concern and highest goal; this means — one’s ego and the integrity of one’s ego.

Many readers of Rand love to apply her words directly to their own beliefs, and the ease at which they do this (as well as the driving force behind why they do it) is largely related to the fact that Objectivist philosophy makes people feel good about themselves. It elevates both the individual and the individual’s self, placing the isolated perspective at the centre of its structure. The ego-driven life and belief appeals to so many because, unlike many other philosophies and theologies, it requires you not to expand your understanding, but relax into your default perception of the world.

All sensory information we absorb is filtered through the lens of ourselves because we can only perceived the world from our own point of view. Empathy is a learned behaviour and it requires a great deal of effort to separate your cognitive abilities from the desire for self-preservation and self-fulfilment. Whereas Objectivism supports a lifestyle where the view of the self and its importance is never challenged, at least not outside of its own parameters.

Now of course, Rand wanted people to utilize Objectivism to improve their understanding of the world around them in order to improve their own quality of life, to create great works of art, and achieve amazing feats. As Rand herself said, “[man’s] own happiness [is] the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.” However, with the individual’s happiness as her or his moral purpose, the definition of “productive achievement” changes as well, depending on what makes this person happy.

Without a traditional moral centre for her philosophy—having already rejected all notions of empathy, altruism, and compassion—what the individual chose to count as quality improvements, great works, and amazing feats remains up to, you guessed it, themselves. So not only does the individual have the permission to focus their energies entirely on him or herself, that person also gets to define the end goals they work to achieve. This means the individual can assert their happiness and the noble activity of pursuing it are focused on either achieving pleasure in the name of Satan or wealth in the name of Christ.

Reason and logic may have be Rand’s focus, but by leaving the obligation to define its final goal up to the individual, Objectivism gives this person freedom to define their own happiness so long as they justify it with “logic and reason” to the only judge that matters: her or himself.

And this leads us to a truth that anyone of any age can decipher on their own: if you want to be selfish, there’s a million ways to justify your actions to yourself. You can say you deserve it, that it’s only fair in light of the circumstances, or you can appeal to a complex system of conflicting religious aspirations and incomplete philosophy touted by the writer of poor prose-laden speculative fiction.

Of course focusing on the self is not an inherent evil. We are limited in how we perceive and parse the world around us because we only witness it through our own minds, fallible and flawed as they are. But caring for the self, that is wanting truly good things for it is not a bad thing. It’s when the self is prioritized above others that self-love turns to self-interest and to self-centredness. And it’s right on the threshold of that transition where the Church of Satan and Christian Objectivists want to find a balance.

For LaVey, it’s about believing in a world where everyone is free to follow their own self-interest in pursuit of pleasure and self-actualization. But this world does not exist.

For Christians trying to thread Jesus through the needle of Objectivism, the goal is the same although with the added difficulty of allowing the full breadth of the Gospel exist alongside self-interested followers of Christ. If you can find a way to defend self-interest without sounding like you are deriding the suffering of others, then you can find a way for Jesus to be fully God, fully man, and fully Objectivist ideal. But Jesus is not so malleable.

For Jesus, as understood through the writings of the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament, care for the self is inherently conjoined with care for the collective, and vice versa. We do not exist in isolation, not as children, adults, elders, or long after we’re gone. We inherently exist in community with others and the salvation He promised was given to the collective of humanity just as much as it was to each individual.

Christ’s salvation and redemption, the core of the Gospel message, is just as much focused on the individual as the entire collective. The collective is itself one, while made up of distinct individuals. Paul outlines this in 1 Corinthians, saying:

“Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ.For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.”

For, within Christianity, the individual cannot pursue their faith in isolation, but only when bolstered by the community of believers. Of course, the church body is full of problems as every person brings with them their fallibility. No church group exists without conflict, and by grouping together the community of Christians risks creating more problems for each of its members, who must take on others’ problems as their own. But by embracing the community, listening to one another, delving into prayer and the scriptures as a collective, with humility, these obstacles can be overcome. Again, from 1 Corinthians:

“But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.”

The community brings greater knowledge and support to the individual that they cannot create on their own, but it also adds more problems for the individual. But God, in His redemptive power, makes the community part of the solution as well.

This is the same with every relationship, including one with God Himself. The individual, in pursuing what is best for their life, has to over its own fallibility and faults, which it cannot do on its own. Entering into relationship with other people means welcoming in greater strength, wisdom, and ability it could not achieve on its own, but that relationship comes with the added challenge of the other people’s faults as well as the challenges of maintaining that relationship. Entering into relationship with the Creator equally presents both added strength, wisdom, and ability as well as a myriad of problems, but not from the infallible God but rather through the challenges to the individual He provides, which include the challenge to love not only oneself, not only one’s church community, but the entire collective of humanity.

It makes sense why both Christians and Satanists prefer to seek out a philosophy and methodology that encourages them to discard the collective, instead seeking to reassert the primacy of the individual. It’s easy and it’s simple. It simplifies things and gets rid of all the potentially problematic relationships that would seek to deter the individual from her or his own happiness.

Of course the entirety of the Gospel is focused on relationships in the form of loving God and loving your neighbours (i.e. everyone), so unlike Christians, Satanists can embrace Objectivism without fear of hypocrisy (although calling yourself a Satanist while asserting the non-existence of the devil comes with its own semantic difficulties).

For in asserting the ability of Objectivism to join with the Gospel is a grave error in judgment. The individual exists in Christian faith but only in the context of a valued and distinct member of the collective. The testimony and personal life of the individual are still appreciated and respected in the church, but not isolated from nor elevated above that of the whole community (both the community of believers and the community of the entirety of God’s creation, i.e. everyone).

But for some, altering the text of Rand, which allows a flexible morality that requires very little of the individual aside from asserting its own dominance, is much more difficult than chopping and screwing the message of the Gospel. Thus is born the hybrid, contradictory Christian Objectivist. Although the Christian who embraces an egocentric belief does not have to be familiar with one word of Rand in order to justify a life of self-service to her or himself, this altered version of the Gospels permeates every corner of the Christian faith today. The service of “I” in exchange for the rejection of “We,” or rather, the “We made up of I and You and Him,” exists everywhere, whether publicly acknowledged or unconsciously accepted.

The Christian church that embraces the dominance of “I” over all else, especially over the love and message of Christ to serve all others (i.e. everyone… like, EVERYone) in this way takes on the appearance and approximation of another church, one that venerates another, completely different individual, even if it too chooses not to acknowledge his very real existence.

]]>https://oneclaymore.com/2017/10/26/what-satanism-and-christianity-have-in-common/feed/0lavey-snake-portraitclaytonandresThings I fearhttps://oneclaymore.com/2017/10/26/things-i-fear/
https://oneclaymore.com/2017/10/26/things-i-fear/#commentsThu, 26 Oct 2017 03:25:35 +0000http://oneclaymore.wordpress.com/?p=3364I thought I’d try writing out some of my fears, mostly to see if I can categorize and extrapolate on them to understand them and myself a bit better. We’ll see. Anyway, here they are:

-Rejection, typically of any kind, no matter if I care about being approved of by the person, group, or institution

-Not living up to the expectations of others, even if I know their expectations are ill-founded, or beyond the limits of reason, or don’t reflect my abilities or skill-set

-Being left behind or being forgotten about, confirming that I was never worth inviting or remembering in the first place

I’m thankful I was never abandoned as a child. My parents were always around and I only got lost in the grocery store that one time.

Being alone isn’t a problem either. But loneliness is—being abandoned while everyone and everything else continues without me, like I was never needed in the first place, that’s a major anxiety for me.

-That the love I’ve received so far is as good as it’s going to get.

I’ve been hurt by people who haven’t treated me like a full human being, thinking that because I don’t speak up for myself and my own feelings that I must not feel the pain when they are trampled on.

I’ve finally started believing that my emotional state is valid, as is my worth as a person, but I still fear that the ones who have hurt me were right to do so, or were extending the full amount of love any person can receive and that my desire to feel truly appreciated and truly seen by a romantic partner is foolish because the pain I’ve gotten is the best I’ll ever get.

-That somewhere out there is someone who fears all the same things I do. I used to believe everyone dealt with the same baggage I did, and it was only my inability to handle being betrayed, rejected, and hurt that separated me from anyone else.

I now believe that what I experience is distinct although not uncommon; the various problems I have are just that: problems, not normal experiences I am incapable of handling.

But I fear for how many people are out there who have the same fears and burdens I do but have no way of parsing them or understanding that they are mental health issues, not things they are at fault for struggling with.

I am truly afraid of how many people out there are crippled by their fear of the world, of all the pain it causes and believe that there is no one out there who understands, or cares, or believes them when they try to articulate just how debilitating being inside their own mind is.

-That I will never be well enough to cling to a normal life.

I want to get a 9-5 job, but with every rejection I receive, I worry the people who want to hire me have seen how truly broken I am and know I won’t be capable of handling the position they’re offering.

I’m so tired of being rejected because I can’t present myself as a fully-together person unlike all the other people who are capable of doing so by lying. Everything I have is there, I don’t draw attention to it, but neither do I have the strength to hide it from anyone anymore.

I truly fear jobs where you are expected to put your emotional state to the side and carry on for hours at a time like you have no fear, no guilt, no pain that you have to keep acknowledging in order to struggle against it. I know the more I try to hide it, the harder it becomes to handle the weight of all of it, so I have to tell people when I’m not able to do something or excuse myself when everything becomes too much.

And by everything I mean: every insecurity I get seeing everyone happy and fulfilled, every anxiety I have about how everyone sees me and how they must be judging every action I make, every passing fear that a subject of conversation, a sudden request, or a probing question will all but destroy my ability to carry on in that public setting.

I can’t imagine working at a place where telling someone the truth about all this would be considered unacceptable and that I would be encouraged to “get a handle” on something I’ve struggled with long enough to know it won’t go away just because I grit my teeth enough.

I desperately want to get back to work, but every application I fill and interview I do that tells me a place will not be kind to me sets me back days, days I spent building up the courage to be able to face the application process again and again.

That would be one big setback, but combined with getting rejected by the places that seem like they would be legitimately healthy for me to work at, where I could feel at ease and comfortable enough to be myself and produce the kind of quality work I know I am capable of creating, it all becomes too much and I wonder whether I’ll ever be able to work for somewhere where I can earn a living wage.

-That I will be left behind again

It’s only really been on self-reflection that I started to see just how much I fear being left behind. Not just rejected and ignored, but purposely abandoned by those I want so desperately to be with and emulate.

I got used to being left behind a lot by other kids. Not everyone liked having me around. I don’t think I ever found a reason why. I know I wasn’t the funniest, the bravest, the most talented, or the most interesting. I was just me.

But I got ignored when I was a toddler, when I was a kid, a preteen, a teenager, and even nowadays I sometimes feel like I’m not wanted by a lot of people. I honestly don’t know why this is.

I don’t know what I need to do, what I have to say, or what I am supposed to be like for people to just accept me and want me around.

I have good friends, great friends even. I have a lot of people in my life who love me for who I am.

But I never quite been able to overcome the despair that comes from having a bunch of kids leave without a trace when I go to the bathroom, or invite everyone but me to a birthday party, or whisper things about me when they think I can’t hear.

It seems so stupid to care about things that most kids experience at some point. But that anxiety and fear is still there today. So much of what I fear is still tied to being a little five-year-old, crying at the playground because no one wanted to play with me yet again.

I don’t want pity for any of this. If there’s anything I want, it would be to make sure no kid ever feels like no one wants to play with her or him.

I want no child ever feels neglected not only by their peers, but their parents, their teachers, the people who are supposed to care most for them.

I want no child to ever feel like whenever they try to talk about the depths of fear and despair they feel, that no one tells them it’s perfectly natural and they’ll just get over it eventually. Some do but some don’t.

Some kids talk to their parents and teachers and pastors and counselors for years before they can find someone who tries to understand just how afraid they are every single day. Someone who says “What you’re feeling isn’t silly or stupid. Your feelings matter and your fears aren’t trivial.”

I went to one councelor who specialized working with kids. She had a large collection of toys on shelves around her office. She told me to find one that represented each one of my fears (they were slightly different at the time). Then find one that represented me. I honestly didn’t see what I had created until I had finished placing everything. It was a tiny toy Piglet from Winnie the Pooh surrounded by cobras and wolves. That sounds ridiculously on-the-nose, but I swear I had no idea what I was doing until I had finished.

It spooked me.

Was this how I felt, like the most defenceless cartoon character of all time surrounded by apex predators from all sides?

But I was just anxious about my masters’ program and my finances and my engagement falling apart and my friends and family being so far away and no one really understanding just how depressed I really was and how every obligation I had was crushing me so much I felt trapped 500 feet underground with no sunlight and barely any air left.

Oh.

Apparently I was much more afraid than I realized.

I kept berating myself, telling myself that my problems weren’t that big, so I shouldn’t complain, I shouldn’t cry, I should just shut up and get over it all.

But those fears were larger than anything else in my mind. My sense of self, my esteem, everything that made up who I am was completely surrounded by these anxieties, suffocating and about to be devoured.

No wonder I felt so small.

No wonder I felt so helpless.

My fears ruled my life, slowly crushing everything I had left.

And they still do.

I’m still afraid.

I’m not in my masters program, I have help with my finances, I’m close to my friends and family…

but I’m still afraid.

I’m still afraid of being alone

and I’m still afraid that as soon as I turn my back, everyone will abandon me again

and that if they do, they’re right to do so, that I’m not worth being around

I usually try and end these blogs with a positive turn, a focus on the hope of the future and how things have gotten better.

They have and they will. I firmly believe this. I know that I feel scared right now, but tomorrow is another day and things will slowly get better, as they have.

But I don’t want to talk about that too much right now. Not because I don’t believe it’s true, because I really do. But because I want to focus on what I’ve written here. Because I’ve tried to hide it all for so long and although I don’t want to embrace these fears, I do want to understand them. I want to understand why an anxiety I had as a toddler is still present today. I’m not afraid of the dark, I’m not afraid of monsters or strangers or even bees (I used to be afraid of bees; now I just feel icky around them. Progress!).

But I am still terrified of being left behind. In all my experiences and growth as a person, that fear has never left nor dissipated. It’s been satiated and reassured, but it has never left or lost its intensity.

So… why?

]]>https://oneclaymore.com/2017/10/26/things-i-fear/feed/1Top-10-Fears-That-Hold-Us-Back-In-LifeclaytonandresThe Story and the Planhttps://oneclaymore.com/2017/10/04/look/
https://oneclaymore.com/2017/10/04/look/#commentsWed, 04 Oct 2017 02:13:52 +0000http://oneclaymore.wordpress.com/?p=3232“Will I ever get married?” is a question I’ve always asked myself but rarely ever felt the answer wasn’t somehow definite. I knew I would get married, buy a house, have kids, and all that jazz because it was going to happen. Of course it would, how could it not?

It may sound silly to you if you’ve never adhered to this before, but separating yourself from this idea of pre-destination, whether for the afterlife or the random tediums of your everyday life, is extraordinarily difficult.

I don’t know how I started to believe in the idea that my whole life was already set out before me, but somehow I did. I think it had to do with my understanding of God: since God knows everything, He must know what happens next (after all, Jesus knew He was going to die and resurrect, plus He knew all this random stuff about people’s personal lives). If God knows what happens next, then it must be set in stone, therefore everything is pre-ordained and there’s no way to change it.

Spiritually speaking, this is kind of a comfort. It takes everyday Christian phrases like “God’s in control” and “everything happens for a reason,” and re-contextualizes them as confirmation that everything is fixed. In theory, this should help you to relax, knowing God’s got this, no need to fret about what tomorrow will bring (another Biblically-inspired phrase that takes on much greater significance in this light). But, for me personally, and, as I only found out years later, many others, this only served to heighten my already deeply-entrenched feelings of anxiety and self-loathing.

See, when everything is fixed, it means what you do has no consequence. When you hate yourself and think you can do nothing right, this starts out as uplifting, because you know no matter how much a screw-up you are and no matter how many times you ruin everything, all the time, like you always do, things will work out well in the end. But that notion that everything will turn out OK no matter what you do helps to reinforce this idea that you, yes you, idiot, can offer nothing of worth, can do nothing of value, and that God has taken control of the universe solely to fix your many, many mistakes. You stupid, idiot.

So this was my entire teenage experience, in a nutshell. I wasn’t incredibly popular, I wasn’t terribly smart, and everything I did was awful and everything good that ever happened only happened in spite of, not because of, my own efforts. Basically I was a complete loser put in a group project with God, who was incredibly pissed-off at my ignorance and passive-aggressively did the whole project Himself, no thanks to my dumb ass.

I can’t really describe what it’s like to spend literal years wholeheartedly believing this about yourself; believing you didn’t deserve anything good, you would never amount to anything by your own merit, but that somehow you’d end up married with kids and eventually go to heaven. And the juxtaposition of knowing I was horrible but would somehow have a happy life in the future (or, at least, I would have everything I needed to be happy but would likely not be able to enjoy it, due to my depression and anxiety, which, I must stress, I wholly blamed on myself) once again cemented my belief that I didn’t deserve anything nice but would somehow get nice things just so I could feel guilty about how I didn’t deserve them.

Have you ever been given anything out of spite? Or received something you know the giver didn’t enjoy giving, but they had to anyway? It’s a hard feeling to describe, but no matter how nice the thing they’ve given you is, you can never truly enjoy it. If you’re a relatively mentally healthy person, the gift would be soured by the negative emotions attached to it. If you really, really hate yourself, then you will blame yourself that the other person is upset and the gift will forever serve as a reminder of your absolute failure as a person.

Now imagine you haven’t gotten the gift yet, but you know it’s coming and you anticipate how you will blame yourself, then you feel bad that you’re getting something nice but you won’t be grateful or happy about it so you get angry at your sorry ass and how you can’t even enjoy something that hasn’t even happened yet and it’s not even about you, because you certainly don’t deserve nice things like a loving wife and beautiful children so obviously those things will only happen in spite of you; your wife will marry you because she deserves to be happily married even though she doesn’t deserve to be married to you you sack of crap and your kids deserve a loving household but they won’t get it because you won’t be able to be a dad because you’ll be sitting around feeling sorry for yourself and how you can’t enjoy anything even your own children so that will be bad for the children and now everyone is suffering in this future that hasn’t even happened yet and it’s all because of you.

Again, I don’t remember a specific point at my life where I started believing any of this—the self-hatred or the pre-destined life of happy misery—but I know it was reinforced and went unchallenged through most of my faith life. If I’m honest, I think a lot of churches, Christian schools, and faith communities are reinforcing this idea of predestination even if they don’t know they’re doing it. I can’t tell you how many pastors, teachers, churchgoers, and relatives in my life have pushed this idea that everything would work out in my life (and others’) because “God has a plan for you,” and “everything happens for a reason.”

Those may seem like nice sentiments, but I think they do a lot more harm than good, especially for those going through struggles; not just mental health problems, but getting divorced when your relationship was supposed to last for decades, being abused and told it’s normal, being rejected because of who you are, or losing a member of your family too soon and having to keep living the rest of your life without them.

There are so many types of suffering that go unacknowledged in the church today. I think this is in large-part because it threatens our own idea of things turning out perfectly, that everything is predestined in our lives. When someone goes through something unimaginable—like suddenly getting a disease or infirmity you’ll have for the rest of your life, a loved one taking their own life because they couldn’t handle the pain anymore, or having a trusted and beloved member of the family cause untold damage to the ones they were supposed to protect—it threatens this idealized future we want, need to hold on to.

So the only condolences many people who haven’t gone through the unthinkable will offer to those who have is “everything happens for a reason” and “God’s in control,” not because that will help the person in need, but because it helps the person offering these words and makes it seem like there is an order and a plan to the horrible, horrible chaos of life.

And to be offered this kind of sentiment when you already struggle against your own mind again and again is devastating. “All this will work out OK, it was supposed to happen.”

I had… a very hard time finding people to talk to when my engagement fell apart. I knew I couldn’t blame myself for my partner’s infidelities, but as more and more people tried to tell me I’d “find someone else someday,” that “everything will work out fine,” and that “God has a plan,” without any real commiseration or empathy, the self-loathing, anxiety, and depression I thought I had gotten rid of after reaching adulthood came back with a vengeance.

I felt like I must have finally done something to unhinge this perfect future I was finally starting to believe I could enjoy. Like God had finally given up and left me with my mess. I knew this couldn’t be true, I knew God wasn’t like that, but every time I would go to church or Bible study over the next year, I would keep seeing happy people talking about how great their own lives were going, how God had had a plan for their lives, and how things would turn out OK for me… somehow.

So I stopped going to church, because it became so hard for me to stand and sit in service every week and have every sermon, song, and conversation insist things were gonna be fine when all I wanted was someone to scream from the rooftops that no, everything was not fine and life in general kind of sucks sometimes.

I never knew how badly I needed it until someone finally told me, in more or less the same words, that there was no guarantee everything would work out, that everything would somehow head towards this inevitable conclusion of perfect happiness and that yes, my frustrations, sadness, and general emotional state were in fact healthy to have and needed to be expressed.

I can’t tell you how freeing it felt to have someone tell me there was no predestined plan for my life and that it wasn’t all going to work out. It was as if massive weight on my shoulders was suddenly filled with helium.

It still has taken years to untangle the mess of self-berating my mind has coiled itself into for… who knows how many years. And I’m still untangling it, still loosening the vice-grip of self-abuse I’ve latched onto my person. But so much of that trap I’ve been stuck in was reinforced by this idea that that was the way it had to be, that it was inevitable and part of “the plan.”

I’ve never quite articulated this before, but I think I felt, for a very long time, trapped in my own life. It had only one direction, it had specific expectations—ones given to me and ones I imposed on it myself—and it had certain limitations on who I was, who I could be, and what I could never be. And through the struggles with mental health, that trap became smaller and smaller, as I hated on myself to the point of depression and felt depressed to the point of anxiety and felt anxious to the point of hating myself all the more.

And feeling that there was a logical endpoint to it all, whether I wanted to get there or not, that was defined for me ahead of time, made the whole affair all the more hopeless. I was an animal being pushed down a path with a stick and a carrot, only I had successfully transformed the carrot into a second stick so even hope was another way I was beaten down.

And when I was in a relationship with this one person, the person whom I thought was the woman I had been waiting for, whom I would marry and have kids with who looked just like me and her, I suddenly felt that the path I was on was worth traversing. My depression slowly left, my self-hatred was crushed under the feeling of love and being loved by this person, and my anxiety… stayed, actually. But I felt better overall.

So when I found out this person had multiple affairs only a few months before we were supposed to get married… well, something strange happened. I wasn’t a depressed, anxious, self-loathing teen anymore. I didn’t go right back to where I was before things started to get better. I knew this person couldn’t define my own worth, I knew her actions were not my own fault, and I knew that I was strong enough to be well again without her. But I still had this path I knew I had to be on, that everything just had to end up one way and one way only.

So I slipped back into a worse state of mental health, worse than anything I had been in before. But… I knew things were different. I knew I didn’t have to feel the way I had felt for so many years. And I held onto this, even as things got worse and worse, as the pressures of school and later jobs wore me down and down, as I felt my ability to keep things together, to continue to make it through life just like everyone else was somehow able to do, diminished. I got to a point where just getting up in the morning seemed impossible. But I still knew that things… didn’t have to be this way. I knew I didn’t have to continue struggling towards a future I didn’t know if I wanted anymore and hating myself all the way. I knew things could be different, whether that meant a different mental state or a different path entirely, I knew I didn’t have to be trapped anymore.

And that’s where this blog has come in. I’ve been basically trying to write out my experiences as I’ve slowly gotten better, slowly have become more and more hopeful about the freedom of a undefined future.

I’ve also wanted to encourage people with what I’ve written, although I have no idea whether all this talk about myself might be all that helpful to you, whatever you’re going through.

All I can say now is that I firmly believe that God doesn’t have a predestined plan, at least not for my life. I believe that plan is to do what He always does: bring out the good out of the horrible, the unthinkable, the things we’d like to pretend don’t happen to other people and will certainly never happen to us and interrupt the perfect future we’re waiting for.

I’ve talked a lot about my own vulnerabilities, the things that have happened to me, and my own insecurities to the point where I might be oversharing. But in feeling so restricted, I know what it’s like to not have a place to voice things, to articulate what so many people have trouble understanding or may not in the right mindset to hear. I want to see more stories written about going through indescribable things, about going through the hard times that so many people in the church community don’t have answers for.

I hope I can encourage you to share someday, maybe not on a public blog and maybe not even with me, but somewhere where your words can find a home. I hope you can know that just because God doesn’t have a grand plan for your whole life doesn’t mean He’s not there with you at all times. And I hope you know your life, no matter where it goes, no matter what happens in it, is worth living because you’re in it.